Sophie Littlefield - Aftertime

“Killed or captured.” He pointed to the Convent. “They contract with MacFall to have it done.”

“Why the hell would anyone want to capture one of those things?” Smoke demanded.

“You’d have to talk to him,” George shrugged. “He keeps his business pretty close to the vest, though.”

“You’re saying he trades with the women in the Convent?” Cass asked.

“Yeah. There’s a few hundred of ’em in there, and they got power, gas, stores, weapons. And crazy-ass determination. That’s something you can’t buy.”

“A few hundred, ” Smoke repeated. “In there?”

“Once they started the Convent, women just started showing up from all over. I thought that’s why you were here,” he said, pointing to Cass. “To join up.”

“To join the Convent?”

“To join the Order .”

“Okay, how about you save that for later, Georgie,” Faye said, drawing a decisive line down the center of the page. “We got business to do.”

“What do you mean?”

She gave Cass a shrewd, clear-eyed gaze. “Trading. That is, if you want to trade. If you want to turn around and walk back out, minus that Ruger, you’re free to do so. ’Course, we wouldn’t guarantee your safety.”

“You’re taking my gun,” Smoke said.

“Not taking it. Trading for it. Or, for a small fee, holding it for you. Until such time as you come and get it back. There’s no arms allowed in here, except guards. Of course, you’d be compensated.”

“With what?” Cass asked.

“Changes all the time. Today, we got kerosene…we got baby formula, Ritalin, Vicodin.”

Cass looked around more carefully. A cluster of teenagers stood in a corner passing a bottle, a few of them kicking a hackysack back and forth. One of them had an arm wrapped in bandages and held in a sling. The job looked surprisingly professional. When the boy dived for the beanbag, Cass saw that he also had a scabbed bruise on his leg, probably just the result of some ordinary misadventure. But where had they found a doctor, much less supplies, to patch him up?

In a stand of pepper trees-still thriving, from the looks of it, though inexpertly pruned-a man was lying in a hammock suspended from the branches, reading out loud from a book by the light of a headlamp mounted on a baseball cap. Below him on the ground, several people sat cross-legged or leaning into each other, listening.

The smell of kaysev being fried with onions drifted past on the air, and Cass spotted the source-a grill set up over coals, an aproned man flipping patties in the air and expertly catching them. People clustered around chatting, waiting for the food to be ready.

It was like a carnival and a camping trip all rolled up in one, and Cass realized it had been a long time since she had seen people having fun like this. Something was out of place, something besides the shouts and laughter, and Cass struggled to place it, and then suddenly she got it. Music-not loud, far-off on the opposite corner, past a row of tents: an old Red Hot Chili Peppers song that her parents used to like.

“That’s- You use batteries to play music? ” she demanded, incredulous. It seemed so indulgent, so incredibly wasteful. When batteries began to run low in the library, Bobby had made a list of acceptable uses: lights for emergencies at night; to run the humidifier in the playroom when one of the little boys started having asthma attacks; for a pair of walkie-talkies the raiders used, before they quit working.

“Generator, actually,” George said, and Cass identified the other sound, the steady low rumble.

“You can give ’em a tour in a minute,” Faye said to George, suppressing a yawn, “if they decide to stay. But first lemme tell y’all what kind of deal I can do for you today.”

THE PACKET OF TYLENOL BOUGHT THEM A night in a two-man tent near the far side of the encampment, which everyone simply referred to as the Box .

Cass made one other trade with George after Smoke left to collect their supplies and find an unoccupied tent-a Balance Bar for an introduction to a woman named Gloria, who Faye assured her knew more about the Convent than anyone else in camp, having lived there until a week earlier. The only catch was that Gloria had passed out drunk a while before their arrival, and Faye advised Cass to wait until she woke up in the morning before trying to talk to her.

“Now she lives here? In…the Box?” Cass asked, drinking gratefully from the Nalgene water bottle Faye offered to share. Faye had loosened up once their business was done, and seemed glad for the company, producing a folding chair for Cass and inviting her to wait there for Smoke to return. Her shift was over, and they took their chairs out of the harsh glare of the spotlight wired to the gate to illuminate the entrance. Faye’s job had to be dull, sitting here at the gate, waiting for people to show up. After all, how many freewalkers could possibly arrive each day?

Faye laughed. “Honey, nobody lives here except us employees. And there ain’t none of us lookin’ to get rid of our jobs. For most folks it’s too expensive to spend more than a night or two here, so they just come around when they have something to trade.”

“But where do they go from here?”

Faye shrugged. “Where they came from, I guess.”

“But if there’s really no Beaters in San Pedro, then why-”

“Look around, Cass,” Faye said. She had offered Cass a camp chair and they were sitting behind her makeshift counter. The gates had been secured for the night, but Cass spotted guards patrolling both the perimeter of the Box and the stadium, moving quietly through the darkness. “What do you see?”

Cass looked. It was like a giant church camp-that was the thought that came to her mind. For a while, when her father was touring with his band in the summer and her mother was working long shifts over at County, they had sent her to one run by Saint Anne’s Episcopal. Kids were bused in from all over, and it didn’t take Cass long to figure out it was a camp for kids who didn’t want to be there but couldn’t afford anywhere else, run by people who talked a good game but didn’t really seem all that interested in whether or not the kids were having a good time. Cass remembered sitting at wood picnic tables in ninety-degree heat making crafts involving leaves and glue sticks, trying not to cry while the counselors taught them a song about Abraham and Sarah.

Here, people wandered aimlessly from the bonfire set up in the middle of the encampment to the barter tables, the little stands where they could trade for deodorant and salted peanuts and baby powder and rubbing alcohol. Open-air bars were set up under pop-up tents; a few were sturdier affairs behind plywood screens. The music never stopped, though it covered a dizzying range, from a haunting piano étude to a remarkably bad cover of “Sweet Child of Mine” by a tuneless girl band. Now some endless country song whose chorus rhymes relentlessly droned on. A few of the people around the fire seemed to be nodding off to sleep.

“I see a lot of people with nothing better to do,” she said.

Faye gave her a withering look. “Then you’re not looking very hard.”

“Save the damn riddles,” Cass said, exasperated. “I’ve been through a lot the last few days and I don’t feel like playing games.”

“Everyone here is wasted,” Faye said, drawing out the final word. “Out of their fucking minds.”

“Well, yeah, you sell hooch in paper cups,” Cass said. She’d been surprised and relieved earlier when, smelling the cheap wine on the women waiting to use the bathroom, she found that it hadn’t called out to her with the strength it once had, hadn’t made her insensible with yearning.